Assignment 1 (Stop motion)

Task 1

Techniques:

Throughout history, various people have come up different ways of creating animation. Whether they were big or small inventions, they all had an impact on the animation we see today with huge companies such as Disney or DreamWorks.

The Persistence of vision was debunked in the early 1900s; this idea was first recorded by Aristotle when he noted down that the image of the sun remained over his eye seconds after looking away from it. The idea relies on the fact that the eye takes moments for the representation of an image to fade away, therefore the series of still images played together at a rapid pace moulds them together to flow as if they’re moving. This is also known as the Phi Phenomenon. This is different to stop frame, which are sculptures that are physically manipulated to appear moving in each frame.

An example of a stop frame animation is the very popular ‘Wallace and Gromit’ series which has been popular since the late 1980s. This has still been used today however with modern day technology, in the film Early Man which was brought out by Aardman in January 2018. I think this technique is still used today because there is an authentic depth and detail to it that other types of animation may lack, even small things like the finger marks on the characters (from clay) are interesting enough to draw in an audience as it’s clear it requires a lot of time and attention to detail. This leads me to believe that this technique will continue to be used in the future even with the constantly improving technology.

Frame rates are the rates at which the still images on a stop motion piece are displayed. An example of this could be the difference between showing a slower piece at 10 frames per second or a fast, flowing piece at 60 frames per second. It is clear that the early numbers of fps have impacted stop motion today, as mostly all animations of today’s time flow in a way that looks naturalistic and real in a way.

Pioneers:

Joseph Plateau was the inventor of the phenakitoscope in 1841. This device was an early animation device which consisted of two discs that spin in opposite directions to each other, this created the illusion that an object was moving and ran at about 40 fps. He was put on this path to success by his father who was a very artistic man who had a great talent in art and wished the same for his son. He was well known for his early work, known as 'Plateau Problems' which led to his creation of the phenakitoscope.

Similar to the Phenakitoscope, the zoetrope was created by William Horner. This device was also an early animation and can be viewed as a three-dimensional version of Plateau's invention even though it was created before in the early 1830s. The device consisted of a drum holding similar images, and when moved in a rapid, spinning motion creates the illusion that the subject is moving. An example of this is this device displaying a horse that appears to be galloping.

The kinetoscope is different to these in the sense that it uses images taken by a camera of a physical object instead of drawings or animated images. This was created by Thomas Edison in 1891 and was first publicly demonstrated in 1893. He was known as one of the greatest inventor of his time as he was also the man who created the light bulb, proving he's incredibly intelligent. 

Developers:

Willis O'Brien was the creator of many prehistoric themed animations, silent movies and shorts. He worked using stop motion with small dinosaur figures that he moved to create the illusion that it's moving. O'Brien's work was so popular among the public that Edison even picked him up for it and offered to hire him as a developer of some prehistoric short films. His first film that caught Edison's eye was The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy in 1915 which was outstanding seeing as he worked off of a small budget of $5000. He went on to creating the incredibly famous 'The Lost World' with Edison's company. Pieces like this were what lead to the creation of many animations and live-action movies of today, such as Disney's 'The Good Dinosaur' and the wildly popular 'Jurassic Park' series. 

Ray Harryhausen was a stop motion model animator who was most famous for his early work with Willis O'Brien on 'Mighty Joe Young' in 1949 to his late work on a book called 'An animated Life' which goes into true depth on his techniques and history. Works like these led to a newly animated version of Ray's first film in 1998 n which he appeared in a comedic cameo. Overall, Harryhausen and O'Brien most likely influenced each other great amounts before Willis passed away, shaping the look of stop motion today.

Jan Švankmajer is a filmmaker and animator of today who focuses on surrealism and, similar to O'Brien and Harryhausen, created stop motion characters that appeared in movies and shorts that were a mixture of live action. One of Jan's most memorable pieces so far is his work on 'Alice' in 1988 in which he animated all of the animals and dolls to appear to move and even Alice at some points throughout. Still to this day, Jan is working on some projects and recently received the Raymond Roussel Society Medal for his work. His early work influenced animation today as we have a very well done live action version of 'Alice' named 'Alice: Through the Looking Glass' which features many animated characters that appear to be very realistic - this will most likely continue into the future with the more advanced technology that's becoming more accessible and easier. Here's a series of clips of all of Švankmajer's animations from the 1988 version of 'Alice'.

Contemporary:

The Brothers Quay are two identical brothers who are famous for their many films, like 'Punch And Judy', 'Street of Crocodile's and 'The Comb'. They even won 8 awards and honours for their films and will continue to earn more in the future. It has been noted that they were majorly influenced by Jan Švankmajer, and even ended up making a film named after him - 'The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer' along with being noted to express an interest in Tim Burton through the years.. In the present day, they have Koninck Studios in Southwalk which was founded by themselves and Keith Griffiths.

Tim Burton is a modern day animator who is famous for his many popular works, such as the Disney classics 'The Fox and the Hound' (1981) and 'Frankenweenie' (2012). Burton's work often had a gothic feel to them, for example he worked on 'Beetlejuice' and 'Edward Scissorhands' which both had tragic, mysterious elements to them. They also often feature a character who is an outcast in society, meaning that his audience tends to be those who like a tragic story line or maybe those who feel like an outcast themselves, his work is very deep and moving to many fans.His work inspires many artists today due to him speaking at Comic-Con and his incredible speeches when he wins awards for his movies. On the present day, he is currently working on the live action version of Disney's 'Dumbo'. 

Task 2


Purpose of stop motion animation:

One important purpose of stop motion is to educate the audience. Mostly all animated movies are watched by young children and families, therefore artists and directors will work together to make their movies informative, teaching their audiences moral lessons or making them aware of real life events and issues. An example of a movie that has a moral lesson is Disney's 'Lilo and Stitch' which teaches the importance of family and relationships, no matter how different you are. An example of a film that makes us aware of real life events was another Disney classic, 'Pocahontas' which shows both sides of racism and the affects it has on the victims of it.

The most important purpose of animation, of course, is to entertain. To do this, animators work with writers and directors to make sure they have the perfect story line that is gripping, emotional, intense, heartwarming and maybe even comical at some points depending on the genre and the audience it is aimed at. This is incredibly important to make sure of for creators as animation is a hard, time consuming, expensive process which cannot be easily re-shot if they make a mistake due to time and cost. An example of how time consuming an entertaining scene can be is from 'The Lion King' in which the stampede scene took around 3 years to create, all for the iconic yet tragic scene that sets the main character on his path. Although this took so long and was s expensive to create, it helped the success of the film even years after it's release as it was discussed among audiences and the raw emotion captured from it drew in a wider audience.

Another purpose of stop motion is to advertise. On TV today, companies are more commonly using cartoons and stop motion to create a more comedic effect, making them more memorable for the audience members, making them more likely to share it with their friends and family, increasing the promotion of the brand or object. Here is an example of an Australian stop motion advert promoting 'Target'.

Different genres:

A feature film is a film that usually runs for around 80-120 minutes and is intended on being shown in theaters. An example of a feature film is Steven Spielberg's 'Jurassic Park' which originally debuted in 1993, yet was so successful that is lead to the creation of 4 other Jurassic movies: Jurassic 2 & 3 and Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Steven Spielberg was also the director of many other feature films like 'Jaws' and today's 'Ready Player One'.These films prove that most feature films are directed towards families and children based upon their content.

A music video is a piece of film that is displayed to provide some sort of background to a song created by an artist and tend to always have a message or hidden meaning even if the video doesn't appear to make much sense on it's own. These are typically viewed by a range of people, from children to young adults. An example of one of these music videos is Lennon Stella's video for her single 'Breakaway', which has a very deep and meaningful message that is portrayed clearly through the clips displayed in the video.

Another genre of film is TV, which has many different types of film ranging from series to documentaries. Television series generally consist of 40-60 minute episodes appearing over a season of around 3-22 episodes which are very popular among the younger generation of today due to platforms like Netflix where they're easily accessible. 

Techniques and formats:

One technique/format that I am going to cover is a time-lapse. A time-lapse is a piece of film where frames that happened over a slow period of time are changed to a faster speed and the events happen in a shorter amount of time. This is something commonly found in film today, typically in YouTube stars videos if they wish to show a quick demonstration of how they put something together or going somewhere therefore are more enjoyable to younger generations.

Another technique/format is Puppetry. Puppetry is movement in film which is created by a person pulling strings or using their hands to create the illusion that a figure is alive and moving on it's own. This was more commonly found in the 1980s-90s when technology was not as easy to access and view by children as it is today, therefore they would find entertainment through the illumination of puppets. An incredibly popular example of this was 'Punch and Judy' which has been a favorite by m,any for over a century, this show was shown on piers at beaches and was very comedic for the children and families that came to view it.

One last technique I'm going to highlight is human stop motion animation (Pixelation) which is becoming more popular with today's generations. This consists of a very long process in which the subject will have to move inch by inch in every frame so that when edited together it appears they're moving. This is a technique which is very popular among the younger generations too as they are mostly very comedic, short skits.